UW Students Use Pressure Tactics to Teach Science to GEAR UP Wyoming Students

July 20, 2012 — Three University of Wyoming students put some “pressure” on
high school and middle school students from Riverton and Lander recently. The
science kind, that is.

At a science academy event at Central Wyoming College July
17, a group of GEAR UP Wyoming
students was exposed to a number of science experiments that centered on the
effects of pressure, specifically how high and low pressure interact.

To understand this unique interaction, they pumped air into
an enclosed glass and watched the rubbing alcohol inside transform into a white
gaseous cloud. In addition, the students guided ping pong balls, with the use
of a hair dryer, through different lengths of clear, plastic tubes; watched
heated pop cans (with a small amount of water inside) crushed instantaneously
after dunking them into a tub of ice water; and attempted to blow up a balloon
located inside a plastic bottle.

“When you blow up the balloon and you don’t have your finger
on the little hole, you can blow it (balloon) up,” says Jessika Lawrence, a
Riverton High School sophomore. “But, if you put your finger over the hole, you
can’t blow the balloon all the way up.”

Alex Kaiser, a senior from Lander Valley High School,
enjoyed watching the metamorphosis of the aluminum cans and surmised that the
high pressure from the ice moves to the low pressure inside the can. He was
correct, based on Nels Frazier’s explanation.

“When you heat water up in the can, you get steam. Molecules
are moving, and this creates low pressure,” says Frazier, a UW fifth-year
undergraduate student from LaGrange with a dual major in computer science and
mathematics. “When the can is in the (ice) water, the high pressure moves to
the low pressure. It pushes the can in and crunches it.”

The educational outreach program, part of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)-Wyoming
Supercomputing Center (NWSC)
partnership, is designed to expose income-eligible students in Wyoming to
atmospheric and computational science, and potential career opportunities in
those fields. The NWSC facility in Cheyenne is slated to open this fall, with a
number of UW faculty scheduled to use the supercomputer to model their
research.

Previous science academy collaborations between the
University Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and GEAR UP Wyoming, with an
assist from UW students, took place during June at Western Wyoming Community College
in Rock Springs and Northwest College in Powell. In all, about 250 middle and
high school students attended the academies.

“This is science in action. Everything we do has a reason
behind it,” says Pam Ramaeker, a UW master’s student from Gillette majoring in
mathematics. In addition to the science academy in Riverton, she previously
worked with students at another in Rock Springs. “It’s not all out of a
textbook. It’s applicable to real life.”

Thinking like
scientists

To get the GEAR UP students warmed up and thinking like
scientists, two groups were provided a cube with different colored sides. Each
side of the cube included a name of a person and numbers in opposite corners.
The objective of the exercise was to discover the links between the names, the
colors and the numbers to determine what information appeared on the bottom, or
unseen side, of the cube.

“One thing scientists really need to do is ask the right
question,” Michael Huntington, a UW graduate student from Littleton, Colo., who
majors in mathematics, told the group. “How do clouds form? How do tornados
occur? Why does drought occur?”

The students quickly figured out female names appeared on
red sides of the cube while male names dotted the white sides. It took a while
longer, but the students eventually determined one of the numbers represented
how many letters were in each name and the other number represented how many of
the letters were the same to start each name. For example, the name “Frank”
served as a clue to determine the name, “Francine,” was located on the bottom
of the cube.

In another critical-thinking drill, which took place
outdoors, some students acted as scientists and watched the other group create
movements, much like cells under a microscope. The scientists’ objective was to
determine the rule the movement group was following. In one case, scientists
determined that those they observed had to keep their distance from each other
and keep moving, but had to stop momentarily when a certain person in the group
crossed in front of them.

“If you look at a chemical problem, this is what you would
be thinking like and about,” Frazier says.

Supercomputer
introduction

Students learned that, in many ways, a supercomputer is much
like a superhero. It may not be able to leap a
building in a single bound, but it certainly could be argued it may be
faster than a speeding bullet. Huntington explained that the NWSC is so powerful
that it’s comparable to every citizen in Wyoming calculating 3 billion computer
operations per second simultaneously.

The NWSC will contain some of the world's most powerful
supercomputers (1.5 petaflops, which is equal to 1.5 quadrillion computer operations
per second) dedicated to improving scientific understanding of climate change,
severe weather, air quality and other vital atmospheric science and geo-science
topics. The center also will house a premier data storage (11 petabytes) and
archival facility that holds irreplaceable historical climate records and other
information.

To simulate models a supercomputer might run, students inputted
different numbers on desktop computers to determine at what density percentages
a simulated wildfire would spread more rapidly. Such a model could provide
clues that could aid firefighters in tackling a fire, Huntington says of a
topic that has been in Wyoming’s daily news since early June.

“I hope they go away
with an understanding of how high pressure goes to low pressure, and that a
supercomputer is fast and useful,” Huntington says.

“It was pretty much all fun,” says R.J. Salazar, a student
at Riverton Middle School.

The NWSC is the result of a partnership among NCAR; the
University of Wyoming; the state of Wyoming; Cheyenne LEADS; the Wyoming
Business Council; Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power; and the University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science
Foundation (NSF).

Photo:Riverton High School sophomore Jessika Lawrence (right),
watches alcohol turn to a gaseous cloud in a bottle. Michael Huntington of
Littleton, Colo., a UW graduate student in mathematics, looks on. It was one of
six experiments performed during a recent science academy for GEAR UP Wyoming
students at Central Wyoming College.